The inspiring life of Spotify founder Daniel Ek, who was turned down by Google at 16, a millionaire by 23, and is now Europe’s best hope against US tech titans

Daniel Ek, founder and CEO of Spotify, 35, was last year crowned the most important person in the music industry by Billboard Magazine.

With over 70 million paying subscribers, Ek is at the helm of the biggest music-streaming service in the world. On Tuesday, Spotify made a successful IPO on the New York stock exchange, achieving a market cap of $26,5 billion.

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Here's the story of how Daniel Ek got his start, and in just over 10 years, built one of Europe's largest tech companies.

Daniel Ek was born in 1983 and grew up in Rågsved, a working-class suburb of Stockholm, Sweden. ”We didn't have much money", Ek told the Swedish public radio in 2012.

Music, however, was abundant in Daniel Ek's childhood home: his grandmother was an opera singer and his grandfather a jazz pianist. At the age of four, Daniel learned to play simple songs on his family's Spanish guitar. His former music teacher from elementary school described Ek as a gifted singer and guitarist.

After a couple of years, Ek received a letter from the Swedish Tax Authority saying he owed them "a couple of hundred grand worth of taxes.” -- ”I had no idea that I did”, Daniel Ek has said.

Daniel Ek was at one point close to personal bankruptcy. His fortunes changed however when the Swedish video chat company Skype was sold to eBay, opening up the European market for acquisitions. Within six months Daniel Ek sold four companies.

A millionaire already by 23, Ek used his money to buy a red Ferrari. He also frequented Stockholm's night life, and was known for getting his friends expensive tables at some of Sweden’s most upscale nightclubs.

The Ferrari pictured does not belong to Daniel Ek.

Wikimedia Commons (cc2)

”I was completely depressed,” Ek has said about this period in his life. “I realized the girls I was with weren’t very nice people, that they were just using me, and that my friends weren’t real friends.”

Realizing he needed a change, Daniel Ek sold his apartment in Stockholm along with his Ferrari, choosing instead to live in a small cottage outside the city. His intent was to do some soul-searching and lean against Martin Lorentzon, the serial entrepreneur who bought his adtech company Advertigo, and would later become a co-founder of Spotify.

Over long walks and movie nights back in Rågsved, Ek and Lorentzon came up with the idea behind Spotify: A lightning-fast, legal music-streaming service.

The music service Napster gave Ek his music education as a teenager. Roxette, a Swedish pop-band that had once been a favorite of his, soon had to make way for artists such as Metallica, Beatles, David Bowie and The Clash.

Napster, which eventually became mired in legal troubles related to piracy, has been cited as one of the main inspirations behind Spotify. It’s founder Sean Parker would later become an early investor and board member of Spotify.

"He has a zen-like patience and an ability to not let the pressure get to him or to get frustrated. Again and again he puts himself in situations where any normal person would have thrown in the towel”, Sean Parker has said about Daniel Ek.

Raising money for Spotify was no easy matter. It took two and a half years to convince investors that the music business was a solid bet. During these years Spotify was funded by Martin Lorentzon's private wealth from founding TradeDoubler.

At one point when trying to raise money, Daniel Ek slept outside an office for months to get the meeting he wanted.

Spotify launched in Sweden in 2008. But it wasn’t until 2011 that it launched in the U.S. “Daniel thought he could just go down to the corner store in Stockholm and pick up a global license", Ken Parks, Spotify’s chief content officer, has told The New Yorker.

Being ”the most important man in the music industry” has made Daniel Ek some famous friends. Daniel's and Sofia's wedding was attended by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as well as artist Bruno Mars and comedian Chris Rock.

Daniel Ek is often described as shy, but also able to inspire confidence in programmers as well as record label executives. Sources close to him describe Daniel Ek as being gifted in combining understanding of detail with the bigger picture.

"[Daniel] became the most accomplished CEO I have ever worked with, despite him being 20 years my junior. Daniel is and has always been the secret weapon of Spotify," wrote Pär-Jörgen Pärson, an early Spotify investor.

Mike Nudelman/Business Insider

Fredrik Cassel, one of the first investors of Spotify and a partner at Creandum, described Ek's impact on the world of tech:

“Looking at Daniel as the CEO of the company, he’s an engineer and a product guy at his roots but with an incredible business mind. So for me — maybe this sounds naive — it opened my mind to the quality of engineers as business leaders. [..] And that was a new one for me. I hadn’t seen that one before — and he was also young, right? Young engineers became backable… or desirable even.”

Despite his wealth and fame, Daniel Ek holds on to a simple lifestyle. Your reporter spotted the Spotify cofounder several times last year shopping for groceries close to his company's Stockholm offices. Here, Daniel Ek poses for a selfie with his personal trainer.

In 2011 Spotify reached 1 million paying subscribers. In the beginning of 2018, that number had reached over 70 million.

Andrew Burton / AP via Getty Images

Since he owns about 9 percent of Spotify, the IPO made Daniel Ek's net worth soar to about $2,5 billion dollars. From 2017 onwards, Ek has stopped receiving a salary, but will nevertheless be rewarded in line with Spotify's future performance.